15 Australian Craft Beers You Just Must Try This Summer

If you want to raise a glass this summer, you’ve never been more spoilt for choice.

The Australian craft beer industry has never been stronger, with more than 100 microbrewers dotting the nation, producing more than 1,000 different beers (we’d give you a top 100, but that would cut into our drinking time…)

Here are 15 beers Business Insider has enjoyed while on holidays, which we think you should try too.

Prickly Moses Spotted Ale

This golden ale with honey and citrus notes, from the winery crew at Otway Estate, also has a conservation aspect: all profits from this beer go to the Conservation Ecology Centre at Cape Otway to help save the endangered tiger quoll. Drink up and preserve wildlife. About $4 a bottle.

Young Henry Heilala Vanilla Witbier

These Newtown lads make a fine core range of 3 beers – English-style bitter and IPA, plus lager, as well as farmhouse cider – that are all work seeking out, especially in 2lt “growler” bottles (think double-Darwin stubby).

Where they really have fun is collaborations – limited-run beers made with exotic ingredients, such as mussels, clams.

This glorious wheat beer uses Tongan vanilla, which is more on the nose than palate, and has coriander and orange peel notes. It’s $27 a growler, but if that’s gone, look for the cherry beer currently brewing.

Feral Brewing Co. Fantapants

At 7.4% alcohol, this heavily hopped and bitter red India pale ale (so get the name?) has a surprising tropical fruit nose and is likely to lead to an afternoon nap if you add it to a lunch session.

Perth's clever, award-winning Feral Brewing Co. make a bunch of interesting beers, so look for the Feral name and you won’t go wrong.

Stone & Wood Pacific Ale

Like a fresh nor’easter hitting Watego’s Beach, we love the fresh, crisp fruitiness of this cloudy golden ale from Stone & Wood in Byron Bay.

It’s the sort of beer that makes you want to sit on the beach, staring out to sea, with the cricket on the radio, as you neck a couple and contemplate how good summer feels. $4

Bridge Road Brewery Chevalier Saison

These Beechworth brewers, in Ned Kelly country, are located in an historic old stables and serve damned fine pizzas too.

The Chevalier Saison is a citrussy and grassy Belgian farmhouse-style beer is traditionally drunk in summer. And drunk and drunk. About $14 for a 750ml bottle.

Mountain Goat Summer Ale

Craft beer in a can?! Bloody brilliant, and handy, we reckon, especially when it comes to taking your picnic rubbish home with you.

A new release from this inner Melbourne duo, Dave and Cam, the Mountain Goat Summer Ale is hoppy and aromatic and slides down easily. 4.7%. $4 a can or grab a slab for $72.

Two Birds Brewing Sunset Ale

Who said blokes should have all the fun when it comes to beer? In 2011, Jayne Lewis and Danielle Allen, mates from Perth, kicked off their own brewery in Geelong (Jayne's ex-Mountain Goat) before relocating to Melbourne.

They make two brews: a golden ale, and this homage to the ocean sunsets of their old home town - a malty amber ale with lots of tropical and citrus notes, combined with malty, toffee flavours and a crisp bitterness to finish. The perfect sundowner. 4.6%. $4.50.

Mad Abbot Christmas Ale

We had a very merry Christmas after a bottle of this Trappist-syle tripel – a seriously heavy duty dark ale to go with plum pudding, or another English batting collapse - weighing in at 11.3%. It’s a bit like beer and rum in the one glass, with lots of pudding and spice flavours from the Little Brewing Company in Port Macquarie.

They make a small, single batch run in mid-winter, and it will age nicely for up to 3 years. $10.

Holgate Roadtrip IPA

The name invokes the empty stubbies that all-too-often little the roadside on the way to Broken Hill, but the inspiration behind Paul Holgate’s citrusy, golden, 5.8% IPA was a road trip in America, which is where the hops used hail from.

His pub and brewery in Wooden in the Macedon Ranges is worth a road trip too, especially to enjoy the beers on tap. $7 for a 500ml bottle.

Nail Brewing Clout Stout

This Russian Imperial Stout made in WA by Nail Brewing isn’t for the faint-hearted of liver or wallet. It weighs in at 10.7% alcohol and a 750ml bottle is $70.

Its sweetness makes it worth drinking with Christmas pudding and the packaging means you could buy one, pop it under the tree and pretend Santa gave it to you.

Kosciuszko Pale Ale

The legendary Chuck Hahn set up this 600 litre microbrewery at Jindabyne’s Banjo Patterson Inn nearly five years ago and now makes some of this floral, coriander-tinged and malty pale ale back at his Camperdown HQ.

It’s really refreshing, when in snow or a heatwave. About $4.50 a bottle.

Red Hill Brewing Hop Harvest Ale

Now this is really is a home brew from the Mornington Peninsula: Red Hill grew their own hops on site, then steeped them in the condition vats to produce this malty, copper-coloured English-style bitter with wonderful complexity and a mix of sweet, pepper and resin notes. 6.1%. $5.50.

Murray's Craft Brewing Co. Grand Cru

Another strong, sweet Belgian-influenced beer, this time from Port Stephens, north of Sydney.

Described as a cross between a Belgian Trippel and Golden Strong Ale, this opulent ale smells a bit like a lolly shop, with bubblegum notes, yet finishes with good clean bitterness.

It's a good meal beer, suited to barbecued chicken, or strongly-flavoured fish, such as salmon. 8.8%. $8.

Moon Dog Jumping the Shark

There's a whiff of hipster cool to the brews from this inner-Melbourne trio, best known for Love Tap, with a pig wearing a bow tie and top hat on the bottle. But they keep tongues firmly in cheeks and the beers are crackers, none more-so than the ironically named Jumping the Shark.

It's an extraordinarily complex stout, matured in cognac barrels, then flavoured with Tasmanian truffle. If sex could be bottled, it might taste something like this, but at $28 for 375ml, pleasure doesn't come cheaply - although it does come with a whopping 15% alcohol kick, so be warned.

Kooinda Black IPA

Now here's something different to fool your friends - an IPA from Victoria with deceivingly dark looks, a citrus and tropical fruits nose, then a whopping bit mouthful of hop bitterness, backed up with a little roasted coffee bitterness too, and resiny pine notes.